Review of Recent Developments

in Pyrometallurgy
P.J. Mackey A.D. Church
Noranda Mines Limited Inco Metals Company
Pointe Claire, Quebec, Canada Copper Cliff, Ontario, Canada

1979 ended a decade which saw significant developments
in process metallurgy, and when 1980 began it was evident
that the coming decade would bring many changes in this
field. This article provides a review of developments in
nonferrous process metallurgy in the last two years.
Good metal prices in 1979 helped buoy the hopes of many
that the current recession is temporary and 1981 will be a
year of surprises in the metal markets. There will be con-
tinued expansion of mineral resources in developing coun-
tries, even though some projects viewed with enthusiasm
earlier have slowed down.I.66 In China,2 the Dexing project
(copper) and the Jinchuan mine (copper-nickel, reputed to
be as large as Sudbury, Ontario) have also slowed down.
There were no announcements of new copper, nickel, or
lead smelters, and two plants, the St. Joe electrothermic
zinc plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania and the Anaconda cop-
per smelter/refinery in Montana, closed down in the face of
increasing operating costs. These actions underline the need
for technology to adjust to changing technological, economic,
and environmental factors. Several new mines in the U.S.
commenced operations l6 and new copper projects in the
U.S. were reviewed. 17 Work continued on the following
copper projects during the year: 180,000 tpy flash smelter at
La Caridad, near Nacozari, Mexico (1982 completion);73
20,000 tpy electric furnace in the Sohar area, Sultanate of
Oman; 19 revamped Tennant Creek smelter4 -changeover
from the top-blown rotary converter to Peirce-Smith con-
verter (late 1980 start-up); the 120,000 tpy flash smelter at
Pirdop, Bulgaria; the 110,000 tpy flash furnace with hearth
electrodes in the Philippines; the 65,000 tpy Mitsubishi
plant50 for TexasGulf in Timmins, Ontario (mid-1981
start-up).
Table I lists some of the major process metallurgical ad-
vances made during the 19708. We see this strong develop-

Table I: Milestones In Nonferrous Process Metallurgy in the 19705

Plant or Process Company and Location Year

First large scale pyrometallurgical process Falconbridge Dominicana, 1971

for nickel laterites Dominican Republic

First nickel flash furnace outside Finland Western Mining Corp. Ltd., 1972
Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

First direct converting of nickel sulfide in TBRC Inco Metals Company, 1973
Copper Cliff, Ontario, Canada

First pressure nickel carbonyl plant Inco Metals Company, 1973

Copper Cliff, Ontario, Canada

World's first commercial continuous smelting and Noranda Mines Limited, 1973
converting process· Noranda, Quebec, Canada

First CONTIROD process for continuous rod production Metallurgie Hoboken-Overpelt, 1973
Olen, Belgium

KIVCET smelting for lead concentrates USSR 1972-74

World's largest electric copper smelting furnace Inspiration Copper Co., 1974
Inspiration, Arizona

Hecla Mining and El Paso 1975··

The first large scale use of Roast-Leach-Electrowin Natural Gas
process in North America

First North American Outokumpu flash smelter and Phelps Dodge Corp., 1977
largest flash smelter Hidalgo, New Mexico

World's first primary copper smelter using top-blown Afton Mines Limited, 1978
rotary converter Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada

First nickel flash furnace with slag cleaning section Western Mining Corp. Ltd. 1978
after uptake Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
* The second commercial continuous smelting and converting process was commissioned by Mitsubishi in 1974 in Japan.
"Closed down in 1977 due to depressed copper prices, recently purchased by Noranda Exploration Inc.

28 JOURNAL OF METALS· April, 1981

 ment work continuing into the '80s to make pyrometallurgical
processes more continuous, to eliminate costly batch opera-
tions and crane / ladle transfer steps, to increase energy
efficiency, and to improve potential for recovery of harmful
emissions and effluents. Some of these developments and
changes were discussed by D.A. Temple in the 1979 Insti-
tution of Mining and Metallurgy presidential address. 72
W.G. Davenport examined innovations and future changes
in copper smelting in an excellent paper, "Copper Smelting
to the Year 2000."18 Copper smelting and converting facilities
installed in the last decade were tabulated. Projecting a
slow long-term growth in copper demand, it was estimated
that this growth will need one to two new smelters and
refineries per year at or near the mine sites until the turn
of the century. Most of these will be oxygen enriched,
autogenous, continuous, or flash units with Pierce-Smith
or Hoboken converters as the predominant converting vessel.
There will be increased scrap recycle, and small hydro-
metallurgical plants on sulfides will be operated.
The current status of the new generation of copper smelting
processes was provided at the "Copper Smelting Technology
Conference," organized by the British Columbia Government
in Vancouver, November 5-6, 1980. 3 Papers were given on
the Noranda, Inco, Outokumpu, and Mitsubishi processes.
KHD's new Con top process was presented and "sprinkle
smelting" testwork by Dravo at Phelps Dodge's Morenci
smelter was mentioned. Papers at the conference will be
published3 and should be referred to for more details.
Evidently, U.S. smelters are postponing any decisions on
smelter retrofits by flash or continuous smelting until the
feasibility of sprinkle smelting has been determined. While
the reverberatory furnace seemed to be re-emerging like the
mythical Phoenix, with oxygen burners, 51 oxygen enrich-
ment,48 and prospects of a smelting shaft adaptation, 52
sprinkle smelting, in which a wide angle flash smelting burn-
er is mounted on the furnace roof, 53 may offer the best hope
of capitalizing on the assets of an existing plant. The Amax
"dead" roast-blast furnace smelting process 78 has been
developed to the point of commercialization.
Current developments in lead, zinc, and tin metallurgy
,are discussed in the Lead-Zinc-Tin '80 symposium volume
now published by TMS-AIME. 6 The volume includes re-
views by Wright,7 Broadhead,8 Kellogg,9 Davey,1O Floyd,ll
I and Willis. 12 Several new processes· are described, including
the QSL Process 13 for lead, a two-step process 14 involving
oxidizing smelting (electric furnace) and slag cleaning for
treating complex Pb-Cu-Zn materials at Hoboken, and the
matte fuming 15 process for metal recovery from sulfide
materials containing both copper and tin. Another process,
the QS process, has also been proposed for continuous pro-
duction of Bessemer matte from nickel concentrates. 67
The 1979 CIM Conference of Metallurgists in Sudbury,
Ontario provided delegates an opportunity to visit the large
metallurgical operations in the area. Process metallurgy
papers were presented by authors from Noranda,40 Inco,41
Falconbridge,42-44 Seltrust Engineering,48 KHD,45.46
and Boliden,47 to name a few. Review papers were also
presented,35-38 highlighting different areas of process
metallurgy design. Gray37 reiterated an earlier appea13 9 to
look at engineering first and metallurgy (normally better
understood) second when thinking of new process design.
The design and operation of the new Falconbridge smelter
was described by McKague et a1. 42.43 P.H. Lindon of
Falconbridge presented an analysis of electric furnace smelt-
ing that included the effects of fine coal addition to the
charge. 44 At Falconbridge, coal or coke dust averaging 1
metric ton/h (or about 2% of the furnace charge) is added
to the calcine and is beneficial in both acting as an in-situ
fuel and helping slag losses. The application of the KIVCET
process for the 50,000 metric ton/year (concentrate) smelter
in Bolivia was described by Chaudhuri et a1. 45 The proposed
I{IVCET plant has a zinc fuming zone. Complete metal-
JOURNAL OF METALS· April, 1981
lurgical data together with some costs are given in the paper.
The application of top-blowing lances in copper smelting
was discussed in another KHD paper by Chaudhuri,46
while the Boliden TBRC plant treating lead dust was
described by Nystedt.47 Operating data for the plant, which
produces a lead bullion and a speiss in an environmentally
clean environment, were presented.
A good paper on the first full year of the Afton smelter in
British Columbia was presented at the 109th AIME Confer-
ence in Las Vegas last year. 64 The TBRC at Afton is an
80 ton vessel under license from Dravo Corporation and
Inco Metals Company. During 1979, the unit averaged 144
short tons/ d of concentrate producing 87 tpd blister copper.
The feed material is a mixture of three parts flotation con-
centrate (56.3% Cu, 4.3% Fe, 5.2% S, 17.2% Si0 2 ) and one
part metallic concentrate (82.5% Cu, 7.8% Fe, 0.2% S, 3.1%
Si0 2 ) with burnt lime as a flux to produce a slag analyzing
4.3% Cu, 16% Fe, 33% Si0 2 and 22% CaO. This slag is
cooled in beds and milled in the gravity circuit, giving a
copper recovery of only 65%; slag tailings loss represent
0.9% of new copper. Copper is cast into 900 lb cakes.
Data for the most recent campaign indicated 80 heats in a
campaign of 50 days. Total concentrate smelted was 7,540
tons (56% Cu). Brick consumption averaged 55 Ib/ton of
copper while tonnage oxygen and natural gas consumption
averaged 12,100 and 4,200 SCF /ton of copper respectively.
A magnetite coating is applied four to eight times per cam-
paign by smelting in-situ a high grade magnetite concentrate.
A mathematical model for flash smelting copper concen-
trates has been described by Rvotti. 55 The paper con-
tains only limited results and a more extensive discussion is
awaited. This approach coupled with the interesting work by
Jorgensen and co-workers56 at the CSIRO, Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia form a solid basis for optimizing and
improving control in flash smelting units. In the latest of a
series of studies,56.49 Jorgensen shows that the predominant
heat transfer mechanism in suspension smelting is conduc-
tion from the' flowing gas. Convection and radiation play
little part. The temperature of the injected particles is
determined by the temperature of the surrounding gas rather
than the presence of neighboring radiating bodies. It was
suggested that fuel combustion concurrent with smelting
may speed up attainment of ignition temperatures.
A new suspension smelting burner which gives a more
even distribution of concentrate has been patented by
Outokumpu. 7o The burner employs a ring of air jets in a
horizontal plane to spray the feed uniformly over a wider
angle than previously. Adding the fuel to the flash furnace
in different ways is also proposed. 71 The addition of coal to
the Mitsubishi concentrate smelting lances has been de-
scribed by Suzuki (paper in reference 3.) The wet coal
(3-4% of concentrate) is mixed with concentrate, dried,
and then fed into the smelting furnace. Apart from replacing
more expensive fuel oil, coal addition reduced refractory
wear, increased slag temperature due to the coal burning in
the slag, and reduced copper loss in the slag. Mitsubishi
has also tested high oxygen enrichment in the burners-up
to 60% O2 with no adverse effects. As expected, the concen-
trate throughput increased.
ENERGY REDUCTION AND FUEL SUBSTITUTION
It is evident that energy reduction and fuel substitution58
will be important in the 1980s, and the return to coal is
already well underway. Noranda authors 40 referred to recent
operation of the Noranda Process with coal which has been
under study for over a decade. The application of coal
(1-2% of charge) in the Falconbridge electric furnace 44 has
been noted and the Mitsubishi test work 3 with coal addition
discussed above.
The application of local low-grade coal to the BCL flash
smelting furnace in Botswana was discussed by Young and
Imrie in a paper presented at the AIME Annual Meeting in
29